The importance of combining earned & bought media

While Google Ads have been great for direct response, Facebook has been making brand advertising look easy. But marketeers should learn the value of earned media. Online ads with a social context are up to 8 times more effective.

All you need to know about QR codes

Even though the QR code was invented in the 90s in Japan, it's never really taken off. Now, slowly but surely that strange bit of code that allows you to access online data by taking a photo of it (the picture below will point to the new RAAK site) is making inways. This is an amazing overview of how it works and -more importantly- plenty of examples of how it has been used.

Our favourite? This project by Oxfam which used codes (ok – they were RFID tags) to let people attach recorded stories to the items they donate to the charity shop. The new owner could then listen to these stories by scanning the code.

How the web is changing Fashion Marketing

That the fashion world is jumping on the latest trends in digital marketing like it's an exclusive mohair Adam Kimmel sweater should not come as a surprise. Even back in 2008 Gerrie blogged about smart fashion brands embracing the web.

Techcrunch Disrupt – the future of technology

Last week tech blog Techcrunch held their Disrupt Awards, a competition for start-ups to pitch their new products. The winner was Qwiki, who are organising information into a new, visual experience. But the one nominee that caught our eye was Badgeville, a service that lets you create social rewards ('Badges') for your visitors.

Social rewards is something we've been thinking about a lot. And this weekend we'll be brainstorming an idea we had for a social rewards plattform for London at Citycamp, a conference about how technology can help shape the future of London. See you there?

To participate or not to participate – that is the question

Participation is a hot topic; we're all thinking about how to engage people. But not every Joe and Janice wants to tell a story about your brand of butter.

Mel Exon, one of the smart people at BBH Labs wrote a great blogpost about this. It argues quite a few good points, but one that stuck with us is how participation needs to work on 2 levels: not just on a campaign level, but also on a constant 'conversation' level. We've been calling that 'Social Media Ready' versus 'Impact Projects', a simple description, which the guys at BBH Labs quite liked.

Don't believe us, believe the BBC

As an avid reader of the RAAKonteur, you must be somewhat convinced about the value of Social Media. But to eradicate that last bit of doubt, just read this very good, in-depth article on the BBC website about how companies are using new tools to connect with their crowds.

Creative of the week – Eric Fischer

Data visualisations are aplenty. But this one is gorgeous and has a function: avoiding the tourists!

Eric Fischer's beautiful maps track the location of pictures that are taken in a city (using the Flickr API). Then, based on how long you took pictures for in the same place, he seperated the pictures taken by locals from the ones taken by tourists. Tourist photos are showing up as red dots, residents' as blue pictures.

Tech insight of the week – How do URL shorteners work?

Did you ever wonder exactly how URL shorteners work? So did we, so we built one (with an API). This week's tech insight explores the problem of mapping long URLs into short ones, and the best solution we could come up with. Read More »